Switch
Taking a quick look at the logs, I am proud to have noticed that, for the first time, the leading OS hitting this site is Macintosh, barely edging Windows XP.
Saturday, February 21, 2004
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
Nothing could be finer ...
... than Duke getting its ass handed to it by, well, anybody, but especially by the very middle-of-the-pack Wake Forest. The best thing: It's rendering Dick Vitale speechless. Well, almost.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the sports world, the University of Colorado has scheduled a news conference -- for midnight EST. It's a bad, bad day in Boulder, which apparently is turning into a bad, bad night, and Gary Barnett is probably thinking that having a girl kicker was a really, really bad idea.
Which leads me to another thought: Who is Lawrence Frank and why is everbody treating him like the second coming of Red Auerbach?
This afternoon's visual: I was riding in a rented Hyundai with a Danish co-worker who was singing along with a Jimmy Buffett tape down a back road, with a steep hill to our left and the Potomac River to our right. This road wound around and curved with the river, with scenery that qualifies to be described as pastoral.
Then we rounded a curve, and all of a sudden, there was the Washington Monument.
And now, it's time for sleep. I have systems to implement and planes to catch. Back to the Edge, tomorrow. I'll leave it to you to figure out how I got from Dick Vitale to the Washington Monument via Colorado.
... than Duke getting its ass handed to it by, well, anybody, but especially by the very middle-of-the-pack Wake Forest. The best thing: It's rendering Dick Vitale speechless. Well, almost.
Meanwhile, elsewhere in the sports world, the University of Colorado has scheduled a news conference -- for midnight EST. It's a bad, bad day in Boulder, which apparently is turning into a bad, bad night, and Gary Barnett is probably thinking that having a girl kicker was a really, really bad idea.
Which leads me to another thought: Who is Lawrence Frank and why is everbody treating him like the second coming of Red Auerbach?
This afternoon's visual: I was riding in a rented Hyundai with a Danish co-worker who was singing along with a Jimmy Buffett tape down a back road, with a steep hill to our left and the Potomac River to our right. This road wound around and curved with the river, with scenery that qualifies to be described as pastoral.
Then we rounded a curve, and all of a sudden, there was the Washington Monument.
And now, it's time for sleep. I have systems to implement and planes to catch. Back to the Edge, tomorrow. I'll leave it to you to figure out how I got from Dick Vitale to the Washington Monument via Colorado.
Monday, February 16, 2004
Foreign territory
I work for a software company. That implies that I have some general knowledge of computers. I have just that -- general knowledge. Slightly more knowledge than the average end-user. I don't have the benefit of formal education or intense training; I basically learned what I learned by poking around until I found something that confused me, and then I clicked on "Help" and did whatever it said.
When you work for a software company, though, general knowledge is not enough. I know this. I don't think I really sold them on the idea that my knowledge of the inner workings of a computer goes beyond general. What I do as well as anybody and better than most is manipulate page-design programs. I can remember keyboard shortcuts and draw boxes and apply styles at high speed, and I can assemble said pages in such a way that they don't make the printer choke when I hit Apple-P. More importantly to this company, I can tell other people how to do that.
But: when it comes time to RAID the SCSI with a Gigabit switch, that's where I have to get off the train. I'm in the process of very quickly teaching myself how to do that, how to speak to the Oracle, how to talk in abbreviations and acronyms (JPEG your own TIFF, you EPS! Or I'll PDF your ATAPI.) Today I was in a project meeting, where the hard-core inner workings of hardware and networks were being discussed. I nodded along and said "yeah" at the appropriate points and kept up as best as I could, but I have to confess they lost me at "gigabit switch." I drew the diagram on my legal pad, though, so I have it to refer to when I look up what "RAID" stands for. (Quick explanation: RAID refers to a server drive setup; on the server that was the topic of today's session, the drives are RAID Level 1: the data is written to the server's hard drive and is simultaneously written to another hard drive. If the first hard drive goes kerblooey, the second hard drive can be plugged in to the first hard drive's slot with no loss of data. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. And yes, I wrote the explanation from memory, but I had to look up what the acronym stood for.)
I have some experience at this. When I built The Freelance Gig from scratch -- a gig which included some hard-core hardware setup -- I went in knowing basically nothing. I came out four months later with a Web site of which I'm really proud and some good experience breaking into a computer and installing cards and calibrating monitors and printers. Then, of course, I went right back to being a journalist, and promptly relegated a lot of what I learned to some long-term memory that so far has been difficult to access.
Bottom line is this: I have a lot to learn, and fast. This is what I signed up for, so I'm OK with that. I can toss around the acronyms with the best of them. At some point -- some point very soon -- I'm going to have to actually know what they mean.
I work for a software company. That implies that I have some general knowledge of computers. I have just that -- general knowledge. Slightly more knowledge than the average end-user. I don't have the benefit of formal education or intense training; I basically learned what I learned by poking around until I found something that confused me, and then I clicked on "Help" and did whatever it said.
When you work for a software company, though, general knowledge is not enough. I know this. I don't think I really sold them on the idea that my knowledge of the inner workings of a computer goes beyond general. What I do as well as anybody and better than most is manipulate page-design programs. I can remember keyboard shortcuts and draw boxes and apply styles at high speed, and I can assemble said pages in such a way that they don't make the printer choke when I hit Apple-P. More importantly to this company, I can tell other people how to do that.
But: when it comes time to RAID the SCSI with a Gigabit switch, that's where I have to get off the train. I'm in the process of very quickly teaching myself how to do that, how to speak to the Oracle, how to talk in abbreviations and acronyms (JPEG your own TIFF, you EPS! Or I'll PDF your ATAPI.) Today I was in a project meeting, where the hard-core inner workings of hardware and networks were being discussed. I nodded along and said "yeah" at the appropriate points and kept up as best as I could, but I have to confess they lost me at "gigabit switch." I drew the diagram on my legal pad, though, so I have it to refer to when I look up what "RAID" stands for. (Quick explanation: RAID refers to a server drive setup; on the server that was the topic of today's session, the drives are RAID Level 1: the data is written to the server's hard drive and is simultaneously written to another hard drive. If the first hard drive goes kerblooey, the second hard drive can be plugged in to the first hard drive's slot with no loss of data. RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Disks. And yes, I wrote the explanation from memory, but I had to look up what the acronym stood for.)
I have some experience at this. When I built The Freelance Gig from scratch -- a gig which included some hard-core hardware setup -- I went in knowing basically nothing. I came out four months later with a Web site of which I'm really proud and some good experience breaking into a computer and installing cards and calibrating monitors and printers. Then, of course, I went right back to being a journalist, and promptly relegated a lot of what I learned to some long-term memory that so far has been difficult to access.
Bottom line is this: I have a lot to learn, and fast. This is what I signed up for, so I'm OK with that. I can toss around the acronyms with the best of them. At some point -- some point very soon -- I'm going to have to actually know what they mean.
Sunday, February 15, 2004
Observations from the middle seat
Thoughts I’m thinking while I’m cruising from over the Eastern Seaboard at 37,000 feet, en route from MCO to DCA while hoping my suitcase doesn’t wind up at CLT:
--Here’s the thing about traveling: Everybody’s in front of you. No matter what time you get to the airport, no matter how quickly you get to the gate, no matter whether you were singled out for the security screening, it seems like the whole damn world is in front of me. The real challenge is trying to pleasant and civil to others – remember, the whole damn world is in front of them, too – while wanting to scream, “Would you puh-LEEZE GET THE F--- OUT OF MY WAY?”
--I guess you get used to the whole ear-popping thing after a while. Meanwhile, I was practically Marlee Matlin-level deaf for four of seven days last week. And there’s not enough gum in the world to make it stop happening for me. Any ideas on dealing with that would be more than welcome.
--I’m in seat 11E of a new Airbus A319 as I write this, in which the archaic “No Smoking” light has been changed to a very 21st-century “Please Turn Off Electronic Devices” light. I’m trying to imagine what it must have been like back in the day, when that old “No Smoking” light went off and half the cabin lit up. I can imagine few things more awful. Even more awful than that sinking feeling you get when you see “B” or “E” as the letter in your seat number.
--Laptop + iTunes = good trip.
Thoughts I’m thinking while I’m cruising from over the Eastern Seaboard at 37,000 feet, en route from MCO to DCA while hoping my suitcase doesn’t wind up at CLT:
--Here’s the thing about traveling: Everybody’s in front of you. No matter what time you get to the airport, no matter how quickly you get to the gate, no matter whether you were singled out for the security screening, it seems like the whole damn world is in front of me. The real challenge is trying to pleasant and civil to others – remember, the whole damn world is in front of them, too – while wanting to scream, “Would you puh-LEEZE GET THE F--- OUT OF MY WAY?”
--I guess you get used to the whole ear-popping thing after a while. Meanwhile, I was practically Marlee Matlin-level deaf for four of seven days last week. And there’s not enough gum in the world to make it stop happening for me. Any ideas on dealing with that would be more than welcome.
--I’m in seat 11E of a new Airbus A319 as I write this, in which the archaic “No Smoking” light has been changed to a very 21st-century “Please Turn Off Electronic Devices” light. I’m trying to imagine what it must have been like back in the day, when that old “No Smoking” light went off and half the cabin lit up. I can imagine few things more awful. Even more awful than that sinking feeling you get when you see “B” or “E” as the letter in your seat number.
--Laptop + iTunes = good trip.
Life on the road
Headed out today for Business Trip No. 3, back to the home office in the D.C. 'burbs. Dragging a nasty cold with me, an ailment which hopped on for the ride during the last trip to Maryland and hung on with me all the way to Oklahoma and back. Certainly not the ideal way to enjoy a life-changing event.
The demons in my nose have distracted me from the joy of getting out from behind a desk for the first time since I was a globe-trotting sportswriter (well, at least, a Rand McNally Road Atlas-trotting sportswriter). The scenes are very cool:
A D.C. Metro subway packed with Georgetown University students, all dressed up in their politico-wannabe attire, loudly debating the issues of the day but interspersing "dude," "like" and "whatever," as reminders of how old they actually were.
A quarter-inch-thick sheet of ice atop the snow in Maryland, something I hadn't seen for eight years (and would do just fine to not see for eight more.)
A young woman and her year-old son waiting for a plane to Fort Sill, Okla., to see off her husband, who was being deployed to Iraq. The mother and son started their journey at 4:30 EST that morning, driving three hours to the airport in Charleston, W.Va. They changed planes in Chicago. They changed planes in St. Louis. I met them when they were changing planes in Dallas, at about 5 p.m. CST, for the final leg of their journey. The kid was handling things pretty well; he was running around the waiting area with all the vigor and energy a kid that age should have. Mom was pretty worn out, but her spirits were high, too, considering she was getting ready to send her husband off to war. Look behind her eyes, though, and you could see the fear.
Coming back from Oklahoma via Dallas, I found myself crammed into a 737 full of the usual bunch of kids getting ready for a week on the Edge at one of the theme parks -- and NASCAR fans. Entire families headed for the Daytona 500, decked out in the gear of their favorite drivers (mostly Dale Earnhardt Jr.), talking about their ticket situations ("Don't have 'em yet, but I'm ready to pay") and their accommodations (one said, "We got a place down by Disney; I think that's pretty close," obviously not knowing Disney is about 70 miles from the track, and with this weekend's traffic, that's going to be a long damn 70 miles.) I was tempted to share my knowledge of a back way to Daytona Beach, but then, I decided, they get to go to the race and I don't. They can figure it out for themselves.
And, oh yeah, my new job? Let's just say that I'm learning there's a whole lot I don't know. But that's part of the fun.
Headed out today for Business Trip No. 3, back to the home office in the D.C. 'burbs. Dragging a nasty cold with me, an ailment which hopped on for the ride during the last trip to Maryland and hung on with me all the way to Oklahoma and back. Certainly not the ideal way to enjoy a life-changing event.
The demons in my nose have distracted me from the joy of getting out from behind a desk for the first time since I was a globe-trotting sportswriter (well, at least, a Rand McNally Road Atlas-trotting sportswriter). The scenes are very cool:
And, oh yeah, my new job? Let's just say that I'm learning there's a whole lot I don't know. But that's part of the fun.
Sunday, February 08, 2004
Allow me to be the first to ask: "WTF?"
I'm somewhere in southwestern Oklahoma. The Grammys are on the TV screen in my hotel room. It's 10:23 p.m. CST, near the end of the show. There are women dancing around in what I guess are Indian costumes, and some guy is, um, singing, and there are people dressed up like Revolutionary War drummers and marching band guys.
Bottom line: I have no idea what I'm watching.
I'm somewhere in southwestern Oklahoma. The Grammys are on the TV screen in my hotel room. It's 10:23 p.m. CST, near the end of the show. There are women dancing around in what I guess are Indian costumes, and some guy is, um, singing, and there are people dressed up like Revolutionary War drummers and marching band guys.
Bottom line: I have no idea what I'm watching.
Clear as mud
Just wrapped up Business Trip No. 1, to the current company headquarters in the D.C. ‘burbs. Am in the airport waiting to embark on the next trip, to a little hamlet in southwest Oklahoma adjacent to a big army base. Still trying to figure out this business-travel thing; still overpacking, still at the airport way too early. I guess it takes some time to find the rhythm. All the waiting certainly gives me plenty of time to assess the situation.
My trip last week took me to a nearly empty office. A couple of customers were in for some training. The trainer and a couple of other employees were there. The company headquarters is preparing for a move to the Western Edge. Like any move, trepidation is coming along for the ride. Those who know they are going are anxious. Those who don’t know yet if they’re going are even more anxious. For a few, it’s an easy decision; they’ve lived in the D.C. ‘burbs all their lives, and all they know about the Edge is tourists and big flying cockroaches and alligators and retirees. They like their seasons; the fact that it can be 85 degrees any day of the year isn’t a big selling point to them. But facing the prospect of being home and unemployed has its faults, too. So they wait, with trepidation.
My trepidation, of course, goes the other way. I know where I’m going to be living. What I don’t know yet is what I’m going to be doing or how exactly I’m going to do it. I’m dealing in abstractions, figurative and literal: I have an e-mail address, but no password. I have a cell phone, but no number. I have a computer, but no software. I have a job, but no real knowledge of how I’m supposed to do it. I have a stack of airline tickets, but am not yet sure what to do once the plane lands.
It’ll all clarify at some point, I’m sure. In a few weeks, I’ll be accessing that e-mail and using that cell phone and blasting away on that computer and finding more normal stuff about which to be worried. Right now, I’ll lug all my stuff to the next place and wait.
Just wrapped up Business Trip No. 1, to the current company headquarters in the D.C. ‘burbs. Am in the airport waiting to embark on the next trip, to a little hamlet in southwest Oklahoma adjacent to a big army base. Still trying to figure out this business-travel thing; still overpacking, still at the airport way too early. I guess it takes some time to find the rhythm. All the waiting certainly gives me plenty of time to assess the situation.
My trip last week took me to a nearly empty office. A couple of customers were in for some training. The trainer and a couple of other employees were there. The company headquarters is preparing for a move to the Western Edge. Like any move, trepidation is coming along for the ride. Those who know they are going are anxious. Those who don’t know yet if they’re going are even more anxious. For a few, it’s an easy decision; they’ve lived in the D.C. ‘burbs all their lives, and all they know about the Edge is tourists and big flying cockroaches and alligators and retirees. They like their seasons; the fact that it can be 85 degrees any day of the year isn’t a big selling point to them. But facing the prospect of being home and unemployed has its faults, too. So they wait, with trepidation.
My trepidation, of course, goes the other way. I know where I’m going to be living. What I don’t know yet is what I’m going to be doing or how exactly I’m going to do it. I’m dealing in abstractions, figurative and literal: I have an e-mail address, but no password. I have a cell phone, but no number. I have a computer, but no software. I have a job, but no real knowledge of how I’m supposed to do it. I have a stack of airline tickets, but am not yet sure what to do once the plane lands.
It’ll all clarify at some point, I’m sure. In a few weeks, I’ll be accessing that e-mail and using that cell phone and blasting away on that computer and finding more normal stuff about which to be worried. Right now, I’ll lug all my stuff to the next place and wait.
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Monday, February 02, 2004
Things I think when I first wake up
If you're talking about the Super Bowl, and you're talking about anything other than the fact that the Panthers simply ran out of time or that Tom Brady is Joe Montana reincarnated or that Adam Vinatieri is making Scott Norwood really think about what might have been, then you fell for it. You got punk'd by Janet Jackson (who has been irrelevant for almost 15 years) and MTV.
Speaking of ... I always thought the hype around the Super Bowl commercials was basically well-deserved, because for many years, those commercials were a showcase for American creativity. This year, it was more like a showcase for American coarseness. We're taking this "edgy" thing a little bit too far, folks. Flatulence was funny as hell in the third grade. Not so much anymore. Look at the "edge," y'all; it's behind you.
Tonight, I design my last page as a professional journalist. I have two more days in the office after tonight, tidying up, cleaning off desks and hard drives, and tying up loose ends.
How is it that the smallest person in my house is by far the loudest? The Young Daughter, 3, has earned a new nickname: the Diva of Decibels. She loves the sound of her own voice, more than she loves life itself. Good for her. At least I always know where she is.
Beautiful blue sky and low 70s today on the Edge. A good day on which to begin the rest of my life.